


Brainless

by Robophonics



Category: Pinky and the Brain
Genre: Angst, Dark Comedy, M/M, content warning for animal cruelty i suppose, takes place in 2020, the romance aspect is a little subtle but make no mistake: the mice are gay, there's a happy ending don't worry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28408905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Robophonics/pseuds/Robophonics
Summary: After his best friend in the world is seemingly killed in a slapstick lab experiment gone wrong(er than usual), Pinky is left to take over the aforementioned planet on his own.
Relationships: Brain/Pinky (Pinky and the Brain)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 86





	Brainless

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I know this isn't what my subscribers expect from me, but the Animaniacs reboot has me thinking about these mice again nonstop. I've loved them since I was 10 years old and you can't imagine how happy finally getting to write something like this makes me. I apologize if it came out disjointed, I'm just so excited.  
> I tried to make this a somewhat believable episode, in the vein of one of those surprisingly heartwrenching formula-breaking ones from the original show. I'm sure you know what I mean. The only difference is the slight bit of actual profanity. I can't help it. I think the funny cartoon mice should say fuck.

Oh, when would Brain be back? The experiments didn't usually take _this_ long! What was it today again? Um... Testing something about his skull, was it? How strong it was? The scientists were probably whacking him with hammers or something. Poor Brain! But he would be fine. His head was really sturdy! And big! Haha!

Pinky found himself wishing he'd said that aloud and gotten the sturdiness of _his_ skull tested, by the other mouse's little fist. Well, he could say it aloud when Brain got back. It would be so much fun! Oh, hang on, he had to type this up. He could never trust his memory.

He squirmed out of a gap in the cage's bars and walked over to the tablet lying on the counter. He opened the notes app. Head...sturdy...

Suddenly, he heard a door open. He quickly scurried back into the cage. The scientists would be so mad if they caught him again! He heard them talking already. Their voices were always so loud, so it was easy to make out the sounds, even if the words were a tad tricky to keep up with.

He took in as many as he could. "The little fat mouse"... Well, that was rude! "Cranial fracture"... Oh dear. "Spine snapped"... Egad, were they even testing his spine? "Poor little guy's probably not gonna make it, but hey, we learned a lot!"

...What. _What?!_ Pinky instantly stuck his head out of the bars and craned his neck to look at the scientists. Were they holding anything?! They had to be! They had to be holding Brain, battered, of course, but in one piece! He was feeling too agitated to come up with a joke about batter and baking and such, but not so agitated that the thought of doing so didn't occur to him. Anyway, he'd gotten injured before! He'd broken so many bones in the past! But it was fine, because Pinky could always fix him up! If they just put him back in the cage, it would be fine!

The scientists weren't holding anything.

And then, days passed. Pinky kept track of the first few, but the number soon became too high to keep up with. At first, he was sure Brain would come back. Any minute now. That certainty began to dwindle to hope. Then from hope to a new emotion he hadn't felt before. And oh, he didn't like the new emotion. He didn't like it at all. Eventually, even that emotion dwindled to something else. It wasn't a feeling. Just a thought.

Brain wasn't coming back.

Fuck.

– – –

The next few days after that thought were a blur. He didn't eat–what was the point without anyone else to test his new recipe for sautéing the food pellets? He didn't sleep–how was he supposed to bear lying in their little bed alone, without anyone to fight over the blankets with? He didn't even run the exercise wheel. He just sat there and looked at the ceiling. He could feel himself growing weaker in every respect. He didn't care.

This went on until he just couldn't stay conscious anymore. His vision were darkening around the edges. It wasn't fun. He would give anything to be seeing stars instead, but...that wasn't gonna happen, huh. He could bang his head against the bars, maybe that would do it, but, oh, it just wouldn't be the _same_.

The darkness was encroaching further, and Pinky sat there and waited for it. He closed his eyes.

And that was when a sharp, brisk voice pierced his skull. _Pinky!_

His eyes snapped open and he looked around the cage feverishly through his blurred vision. Nothing there.

_Just what do you think you're doing? Is this healthy?!_

"Well... No," Pinky murmured aloud.

_Precisely!Why, this is humiliating!_

"It is?"

_Where is your energy? Your zest for life? Your little antics that are all...eugh..."fun-fun, silly-willy"?_

"...I don't know. Poit." Pinky still couldn't see anything. He cast his eyes to the floor. "It's just...not the same without you, Brain." It was the first time he'd spoken the name since he'd last seen him.

_Hah! Of course it's not! Everyone in the world flounders about without my brilliant leadership! ...But, er, never mind that. You have to get up, Pinky. You have to keep going._

"But why?"

_Who else is going to take over the world? Who else is going to teach humans that they can't step all over us just because we're five inches tall?_

"Um, Brain, it's just me that's five inches tall. _You're_ only _three_ inches tall."

Pinky heard a growl and he prepared himself for a blow to the head. Much to his disappointment, it never came.

 _All right, well! You get the picture! You can do it, Pinky! As much as it...pains me to admit, you have always had more success than me, after all. Even alone, you_ will _rule the world!_

"How?" Pinky asked.

There was no answer. The voice had gone silent. ...Huh? What had just happened? Had that been Brain's...ghost? Ghosts were real?! This was huge! Just wait till he called the guys at Buzzfeed Unsolved about this! Oh, wait, no, no, what was he thinking? Silly things like that didn't matter! He had a mission now!

He shakily got to his feet and then collapsed again. He guessed that for now he'd have to crawl around on all fours like some kind of...rodent? Egad, that was a new one!

He made his way to the pile of food pellets in the corner and started feverishly shoveling them into his mouth. He needed energy! He had to come up with a plan, and he knew well how much it often wore out Brain to do that! ... _Had_ often _worn_ out. There was a throbbing pain in his chest. It was either him desperately missing his dearest friend in the world, or it was heartburn from eating too fast. He couldn't tell for the life of him. Now, as Brain always said, "a plan, a plan...!"

Pinky tried to stand up again and fainted immediately.

– – –

Ooh, what day was it? Pinky picked himself off the floor. His head hurt. He squinted through theat the calendar on the other side of the room. It was...September 28, 1998? Egad, he'd slept so long he'd gone...back in time! Suddenly, he recalled Brain complaining just a few days before... Anyway, complaining about how the scientists hadn't changed the calendar for 22 years. Well, that explained that, then. The exact day didn't matter anyway. Every night was a good night to try to take over the world on.

He resolved to pace around in circles until he thought of a plan.

An hour passed. His mind was blank. At least he was getting in some exercise.

Another hour passed. He was having some thoughts now, but they sure weren't about taking over the world. They were thoughts he was trying _not_ to have. Oh, what would Brain do? Well, he would probably rifle through that filing cabinet of plans, and...

The filing cabinet! Of course! That was just what he needed! Thank goodness Brain was so organized. Pinky slipped through the bars even more easily than he had before. All those days of not eating, he guessed. He skittered up the cabinet until he reached the top drawer. He tugged on the handle with all the strength he had left in his arms and somehow managed to wrench it open. This, of course, sent him tumbling to the floor, but he bounced right back again and climbed his way up and into the drawer. He sneezed. It was dusty in here! Now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen Brain use the drawer for years. Oh dear, would the plans still be relevant in 2020?

As he began to look through the folders, he made sure to keep track of his tail. He'd gotten paper cuts on it _way_ too many times over the years, and it was never the fun kind of painful. But...maybe even that pain would've been a welcome distraction from the type that was quickly building up as he looked at more and more of Brain's elegant handwriting. He certainly wouldn't have been able to read handwriting like this usually, but after so many years of reading it, he knew every letter shape of this particular one by heart.

But there was no other pain to distract him. His eyes were rapidly watering. It was already getting hard to see and he needed something to wipe them with, but oh no, he couldn't use the papers! He didn't want to get his hands wet either. He rubbed his eyes with the back of the forearm and it worked well enough.

Now able to half-focus on the contents, he thought as hard as he could about each plan. Most of these they had already done, and they only conjured happy memories that made his chest feel even tighter. Pinky had foiled that one, and then Brain had bopped him on the head. Brain has messed that one up himself, and then he'd bopped Pinky on the head again. And now that would never _ever_...!

Pinky swallowed a lump in his throat and flipped to the next one. Creating a hypnotically attractive animatronic newscaster, getting her on every network in the world, and broadcasting a subliminal message of subjugation? Now that didn't sound familiar! It was brilliant too! He almost said that aloud before remembering that Brain still would not hear it.

There was one tiny little problem–no one watched TV anymore! But Pinky knew just what people _did_ watch. He just needed to change a couple details...

– – –

He'd just about gotten FaceRig working, and he was very happy with the design he'd come up with. When he'd tried to sync his face to a human character, it had come out looking really weird, so he'd added some animal features. Cat features, specifically–he knew how popular those were. He'd just have to cast his mind back to his old friend Precious for the right sort of behavior. It should be easy enough to do whatever she would!

The character's name had really stumped him for a bit, but during his daily routine of silently bonding with the pinky finger on the lab's hand diagram, he'd noticed the very cool word printed next to the thumb. Pollex! It was so fun to say! And it sounded enough like a girl name, right? And only a _teensy_ bit like some kind of laundry detergent, right?

He'd also been working on a voice. He'd remembered that voice lesson thing Billie had been talking about the last time he'd seen her, and while he wasn't sure how to go out and take them in person, he was finding some very helpful tutorials online. The last time he'd recorded himself and played it back, he'd been amazed. He sounded just like an anime girl! It was almost perfect! His only roadblock was that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop saying narf, and poit, and those sorts of things. He would just have to work with that, maybe fit it into the character's appeal somehow?

If Brain were here, he'd ask him to listen and give his opinions. He'd definitely be impressed, even if he wouldn't admit it.

With things like they were, Pinky would just have to improvise. He was good at that, at least. Today, streaming himself playing Dark Souls as a catgirl. Tomorrow...

...How did the rest of that phrase go again?

– – –

Things were going well, he was pretty sure! Pollex had trended on Twitter five different times over the past week, and the number of viewers only got higher every stream. Everyone loved the catgirl who said narf and was bad at video games. Though the last part did get under Pinky's skin a little. He was _great_ at video games when he had the freedom to scamper around on the controller! Having to rig the device twice as large as him so he could push all the buttons while remaining in one place so as not to mess up the face sync... Well, now, that was hard! It truly belied his abilities.

But speaking of rigging devices, Pinky had been following Brain's blueprints for the mind control machine to the letter. Or, well, almost to the letter. Some parts just hadn't made sense (sorry, Brain!), and so he'd adjusted them. It should be done by that night's stream, which was set to have a record-breaking number of viewers. Everything was going according to plan.

As he thought about all the people that would be there, a certain feeling began to build. He felt...bad. Everyone was just there to have fun. They loved the character he'd made. They trusted her. She made them happy. And Pinky was going to use them to, well...take over the world.

But as soon as he thought those words, he remembered. He remembered why he was doing this. He remembered the casual way the scientists had talked. He remembered the years of experiments just like that one that looking back on it now, weren't so fun and silly after all. He remembered how he'd never even found a body to put to rest, excavating all the medical waste containers to no avail. He'd spent too long extending humans the benefit of the doubt. So many times he'd advocated for them and implored Brain to treat them with more kindness, and for this? The more he thought about it, the more it made him sick.

No more being a nice little mouse.

– – –

"Hey, did you hear about that mob outside the White House? Talking about how the rightful leader is some...fictional girl named after a thumb?"

"Oh yeah, I read about that. Man, this anime thing is getting out of hand. This would _never_ have happened in the 90s!"

Trying to ignore the scientists, Pinky fiddled with the machine. The next step...making the effect infectious.

– – –

He was almost finished with the inauguration speech he was going to deliver via hologram. At the last second, he decided to cut the part about mandating shiny pants. No, no. Stuff like that wasn't important anymore. After he got rid of the pesky house and senate, all he was going to mandate was that the country _groveled_.

– – –

Today was the day. He would give the order to launch an invasion on the United Kingdom, the place he'd been born. He didn't feel bad about that. That was where the people who'd separated him from his family lived, after all. Pinky hoped they suffered.

"People of America," he spoke into the microphone in his smoothest, cutest voice, "first of all, narf! Second–"

He heard the cage door creak open. He turned around.

_Egad._

"Well, Pinky, congratulations on not destroying the lab while I was gone. I must say, I'm impressed."

Pinky's heart was about to beat out of his chest. Without a second thought, he dropped the microphone and pressed the self-destruct button on the mind-control machine. In a burst of flames, it instantly became a melted, smoking mess of metal and circuitry.

Brain blinked at him. "O...kay. Perhaps I spoke too soon."

"Brain! BRAIN!" Pinky launched himself across the cage, tackled him to the floor, and without even thinking, kissed him on the lips.

"P-Pinky!" Brain shoved him off. "What are you _doing_?! Owww, my vertebrae..."

That was when Pinky noticed all the braces and bandages. "Oops! Sorry, Brain. That...didn't hurt _too_ much, did it?"

Shakily, Brain got to his feet again. "I'm...ow...afraid the answer to that question will disappoint you, my friend. More importantly, _why_ did you–"

"Ohhh, haha, never mind that!" Pinky clasped and unclasped his hands, suddenly anxious that he'd made a mistake there. "Tell me what _happened_ , Brain!"

"Well, after I endured my worst instance of wanton animal cruelty yet, I awoke again to find myself at..." He grimaced. "..The veterinarian's office. Apparently, some passing child found me, barely clinging onto life by a thread, in the medical waste and begged their parents to take me there."

"Oh! That was nice of them!"

"Yes, yes, I suppose it was." Brain sighed. "Still, it was unspeakably demeaning. Something I'm sure you couldn't possibly understand."

"Well, if it's _de_ -meaning, I suppose no one could really understand it, Brain!"

Brain's eye twitched. "I'll ignore that. Anyway, after my condition was relatively stable, the family took me home as a pet, only compounding my humiliation. I mean, they treated me well I suppose, and I will grant them a lofty position in my regime in gratitude, but for a mouse of _my_ caliber...!"

Pinky was just nodding along, deliriously happy.

"After I fully recovered my locomotive abilities, I made my escape, and, well, here I am."

"Here you are!" Pinky exclaimed cheerfully. "Oh, but Brain... Why would you come back to the lab after what happened?"

"Why, because _you're_ h–" Brain suddenly stopped with an unreadable expression on his face and gave an awkward laugh. "That is, because the food pellets are here! I...never could develop a taste for the ones the family gave me. I'm sure you know how it is."

"Oh, I certainly do!" Pinky sighed contentedly. "Ahhh, the subtle flavors..."

"By the way, Pinky, do you know why there are all those billboards and statues about this...cat girl? I saw quite a few on my way here. You're generally more up on the youth's trends than I am."

"Oh, haha, that! Narf!" Pinky tried very hard not to sound suspicious. "She's a VTuber, Brain! You know, a 3D model representing a mou–I mean person who plays video games in character as them! It's _huge_ these days! But these things move so _fast_ , you know! I'm sure they'll all be talking about another one tomorrow."

"Hmph. Apparently. And..." Brain leaned to the side to look at the remains of the machine. "What's _that_? It looks almost like my blueprints for–"

"THAT'S A VIDEO GAME CONSOLE, SILLY." Pinky's voice came out louder than he intended as he darted to cover up the machine best he could.

"Strange." Brain stepped closer to examine it. "I've never seen a console shaped like this before."

"Oh, that's because it's...next gen!" Pinky said very rapidly. "Top of the line! _Very_ exclusive! It only just came out while you were gone!"

"And...how much did you pay for it."

"I...uh...I didn't!" Pinky managed to conjure just the right sheepish expression. "I stole it. Troz!"

Brain looked mildly startled. "You did? From where?"

"From– From GameStop!"

"Can you really just..." Brain looked deep in thought. "Well, I suppose I never _have_ been in one of those. I'll take your word for it. And Pinky.... Are you sure you've been all right in my absence? This all seems like rather odd behavior, even for you."

Pinky nodded fervently. "Yes! I was just bored, haha! I...really am glad you're back, Brain. Now we can prepare for tomorrow night!"

Brain blinked at him, and his next words came out sounding entirely sincere. "And what are we doing tomorrow night, Pinky?"

"Why, the same thing we do every night, Brain! Try–" He trailed off with a laugh. "Oh, I'll let you say it."

"Very well." Brain began to adopt a dramatic pose. "Try to take over the– FUCK!" He cringed violently and clutched his head. "Hurts hurts hurts..." he hissed under his breath.

"Orrrr we can take a few nights off!" Pinky patted his shoulder very gently. "That works too!"

_They're dinky, they're Pinky and the Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain, Brain..._


End file.
